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Pertaining to the discussion down-thread on the subject of young men and women disliking each other:
The New York Times just published the latest iteration in what feels like a semiannual analysis of dating after 60. The article itself contains the usual "no-duh" realities (old people come with baggage, the machinery doesn't function like it used to) and far-reaching copes (it'll be the best sex of your life, less drama involved), but of particular interest this time around is the unusual tenor of the comment section.
I always enjoy reading these articles and their comments despite (or rather, because of) having a ways to go until becoming a member of the relevant age bracket. The typical reader reaction usually involves stories of finding love late in life, rediscovering the joy of intimacy, meeting new and interesting people to treasure their remaining time with, etc. But man, whether it's a generational shift or a sudden change in attitudes, the elders are much more unhappy this time around. Most of the top comments describe a vehement dislike and/or disgust of the opposite sex, all in a single direction: these women simply hate dudes. Here are some representative excerpts:
"...after a lifetime of having sex with men who have no clue about women's bodies and how to please them, old men waving their bottles of little blue pills and complaining about their 'needs' are not appealing. I'd rather go out for lunch and take in the latest exhibit at a museum with my female friends. They are far more interesting."
"Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago."
"The LAST thing I want is to have someone else to take care of. I enjoy solitude. There is a huge difference between being alone and being lonely."
"75% of domestic violence is committed against women. A third of female murders in 2021 were by their intimate partner. No, not all men. But statistics matter. And they show that women have a lot more to lose in opening their hearts and homes to a man."
"I'm in my 50s and this is already true. The men are fine, but my women friends? They are traveling, learning, reading, exploring. If there was a pill I could take to become a lesbian I'd swallow it so fast...."
"I am appalled by the first photograph in the article which shows a man’s hand around the woman’s neck, even though his thumb is on her cheek. I think it was a thoughtless choice and I am willing to bet that many abused women relived trauma when seeing it."
"Statistically, men are far more likely to leave their wives when the woman gets a cancer diagnosis."
This is the rhetoric that younger generations are hearing from their parents and grandparents. Lifetimes spent with and for another person, only to openly resent those decades of effort late in life. With the hysteria of "sexual assault" at the other end of the spectrum, both independent sexuality and committed intimate relationships are massively disincentivized (or at least, that's how it looks to someone just beginning to figure out the structure of their life). The only guarantee of a lifetime of happiness, it seems, is to stay free of interpersonal bitterness, free of legal and social humiliation, free of sacrificing your own interests for someone who hates you; to live an entire life alone.
How do you convince a 22-year-old of either sex that their perception is mistaken, that there is value in seeking committed relationships with another person?
A bit off topic, but I've heard this sentiment from a number of women, yet I've never seen it in real life. I strongly prefer smart women, and no male friend or relative has ever told me (or acted like) they prefer dumb women. Where do women get this idea? It must be rooted in real experiences to some extent, but it's completely alien to me.
My candidate hypotheses:
Most men like to discuss niche topics of particular interest to them, and women interpret this as a need to feel intellectually superior.
Most men dislike argumentative or combative women, and such women interpret this as men disliking their intellect rather than their attitude.
Most men would choose a hot, dumb woman over a smart, ugly woman, and women interpret this as men needing to feel intellectually superior.
Woman here, and I started out not believing that "men need to feel intellectually superior to women" but absolutely agree with it now. The experiences that tilted me that way:
As a woman, I have had many conversations with men where I curiously asked them many questions about their intellectual areas of expertise. I'm a pretty knowledgeable person and in many of those cases also had credentialed expertise to bring to the table, comparable to what the man was bringing. Following their own monologues about intellectual topics, not one of those men, literally nobody, ever asked me a curious question that indicated their parallel interest in eliciting information from me. Indeed, no non-related man has ever asked me a curious information-eliciting question about anything in my whole life.
In those intellectual conversations where I did chime in with information or ideas of my own unasked, male conversation partners would consistently nod dismissively, then redirect the conversation back to some topic where they could educate me.
As somebody who loves to learn about stuff in conversations, I try really hard to make sure I'm facilitating a real exchange of high-quality information where I know my stuff and the other party is genuinely interested. I have encountered so many men bloviating on and on, with obvious pleasure, about topics where they actually knew very little, to visibly indifferent conversation partners, that it's hard not to conclude that this is actually a dominance behavior intended to make them feel high-status by capturing someone's polite attention, rather than a genuine enjoyment of intellectual contact. Men seem to do this substantially more with female conversation partners.
I have had several disturbing conversations where the principle "most men dislike argumentative women" played out as the man getting visibly angry and breaking off the conversation as soon as I indicated my interest in offering (polite, calm, well-evidenced) counterarguments to whatever they were contending. I have known maybe 3 men who could handle a sustained good-natured debate with me, a very polite lady, without getting angry and insecure and needing to stop, and I loved those dudes so much and desperately miss the ones no longer in my life. Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.
One of the best allegorical moments of my life:
I was managing a Rock Climbing gym at the time, most of the part time workers were local teenagers. We had just gotten a MoonBoard for the gym and set it up, two of the kids Romeo and Juliet stayed after closing up with me to play with our new toy, both seniors in high school while I was a college grad at the time. Romeo was a pretty good hobby climber who had gotten into it with some buddies a year or so ago, Juliet had parents who climbed back in college before becoming bankers and had been climbing since she was 8, competing in youth level since she was 14.
Now the thing about rock climbing is, and why I recommend it to parents so much, is that it is possibly one of the more gender equal real sporting events. All the very best Pros are men, there are grades that no woman has ever climbed, but anywhere below the pro level it is mixed. You are more likely to run into men who are really good climbers in your gym than you are to run into women, but there will be women in the top grades too, and until you are climbing the top grades you will run into women who stomp you. Romeo was a good climber, but Juliet was much better. And worse, while Romeo and I hacked our way up routes with lots of swinging and cutting feet and grunting, Juliet would glide gracefully up the same climb. What she lacked in reach and upper body strength, she more than made up for in balance, flexibility, and coordination. Her technique was perfect. She danced up the wall, while I yanked myself up.
Romeo was a sweet kid generally, well behaved, responsible, a nerdy Fillipino with great SATs who later went to USC, we called each other "Grandpa" and "Grandson." Liberal politics, very respectful of the girls on staff generally (this was a regular problem we dealt with regarding other male staff). He liked climbing a lot, took to it in that classic nerdy-kid late bloomer way that I took to CrossFit and later climbing, it gave him a venue to be athletic despite not being on the football or basketball teams at his high school, it helped his self esteem as he got better.
As Juliet beat him, you could see his self esteem imploding, and he started acting out in ways I normally didn't see. He started making increasingly offensive jokes in a way that was out of character for him, he was almost bouncing around with nervous energy after each time he failed a climb and Juliet flashed it, cracking dick jokes or sex jokes at every half-opportunity. It got progressively worse as the problems went on. When he started in on Jew jokes ("Bet climbing a fence would have helped you get out of Auscwitz" or something like that) I had to ask him to help me with something in the storage room and tell him to knock it off, then told them I had to turn off the lights and I was headed home.
There's a saying I've seen in the Manosphere that women are human beings and men are human doings. Women are valuable in their own right, or at least as objects of sexual and romantic desire. Men are valuable only in the things they do. Disregarding debating its truth value, this is a deep insight into the insecurity of the male psyche, how we perceive the world. Every man hangs his self esteem on something he does. Romeo hung it in part on rock climbing. He didn't have some big crush on Juliet, as I recall, but she was a girl his age who would have been appropriate for him to hook up with, and being a healthy teenage boy he had probably thought about it. She had value inherently as a cute girl, his own value came from the things he did. Then, it turns out she is also better at the things he did, his sense of his own value imploded.
So:
Makes a lot of sense to me. You've taken away their Doing while keeping your Being, it throws off the order of the universe for them, they have no place anymore.
I'll note the irony that I wrote multiple paragraphs to explain a woman's own experiences to her.
Your story makes me vividly imagine cutting her safety equipment and hearing the snapping sound as she breaks her neck.
I'm not a good man.
Well, this certainly isn't a good comment. Banned for a day.
Can you tell me which rule I broke, and whether the decision to ban me came before or after identifying that rule?
Unkind, unnecessarily antagonistic, not writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, egregiously obnoxious, and multiple user reports.
I banned you for breaking the rules, so yeah, the decision to ban you came after identifying the rules you were breaking. But the case was, as you can see, wildly overdetermined. Coming back to open a rules lawyering session (as your aim appears to be here) is not going to benefit this account's longevity, though.
You misunderstand me if you think I'm interested in rules lawyering. What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order. So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.
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